It is common to classify the sensitivity of contents of electronic documents in ways that classify all of the contents of each document together; i.e., for a particular document, these techniques generate a single sensitivity classification that applies to the entire document.
For example, in some cases the sensitivity of contents of electronic documents is classified by storing documents in different places based on their overall level of sensitivity. As one example, documents of a particular company containing any confidential content may be stored on a first storage device or server that may be accessed only by specifically authorized individuals; documents containing no confidential content but some private content may be stored may be stored on a separate second storage device or server accessible by any employee of the company; and documents containing no confidential content and no private content may be stored on a third storage device or server that may be accessed by anyone.
This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This summary is not intended to identify key factors or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.
A facility for interacting with an electronic document is described. The facility causes to be displayed a visual representation of the document, and receives input representing a painting interaction—similar to painting interactions sometimes used to paint formats in word processing documents—with a portion of the displayed visual representation of the document that corresponds to a portion of the document. In response to receiving the first input, the facility imposes on the corresponding portion of the document a distinguished content classification level.
The inventors have recognized a significant deficiency of conventional techniques for classifying the sensitivity of contents of electronic documents: they provide no basis for classifying different portions of the same document at different levels of sensitivity.
Accordingly, the inventors have conceived and reduced to practice a software and/or hardware facility for classifying portions of electronic documents in response to painting interactions by a user (“the facility”). In some embodiments, while a document is displayed, the facility enables a user authorized to classify portions of the document—such as an owner of the document—to select a sensitivity classification level from a displayed palette, then interact with portions of the document in order to classify or reclassify those portions at the selected classification level. In various embodiments, such interactions can take the form of various combinations of dragging the mouse cursor over these portions, clicking on these portions; using the user's finger to tap, slide over, scribble over, or circle these portions; using a stylus to tap, slide over, scribble over, or circle these portions; etc. In various embodiments, the facility imposes content classifications on portions of documents of a variety of types, including portions of documents containing text, images, video, audio, diagrams, spreadsheets, slideshows, messaging and/or commenting content, etc.
In some embodiments, the facility permits a user to paint classification levels onto a representation of the document containing the document's full contents and mirroring the document's formatting. In various other embodiments, the facility permits the user to paint classification levels onto a document representation that relates to the document in a variety of other ways, including: a copy of the document containing the document's full contents but being formatted differently from the document, such as to accommodate visual indications of content classifications imposed on portions of the document by the facility; an outline of the document; a summary of the document; a skeleton of the document; etc.
In various embodiments, the facility displays various kinds of visual indications of content classifications imposed on different portions of the document such as by representing different content classification levels with different colors, patterns, shapes, etc. In various embodiments, the facility adds such visual indications of content classifications in various positions, including, for example, in the document representation's margin; in a scrollbar for scrolling the document representation; in a pop-up window triggered by user interactions such as hovering a mouse cursor or directing a human gaze; within the content of the document representation; etc. In various embodiments, these indications take various forms, including, for example, painting segments of the height of the scrollbar with different colors or patterns relating to content classifications imposed on document portions at corresponding positions within the representation; directly painting the content of the document representation with different colors or patterns, either changing the color of the content (e.g., text) itself, or changing the color or pattern of the background against which the content is displayed, or inserting a border of a particular color and/or pattern around the content; adding to the margin shapes whose presence, colors, patterns, dimensions, or areas relate to the content beside them; etc.
In various embodiments, the facility imposes classification levels on document portions at various different levels of granularity, such that, in painting, the user can select, for example: one or more characters; one or more words; one or more lines; one or more paragraphs; one or more document sections; one or more separately-stored document fragments; one or more arbitrary document spans; or one or more document elements of another type. In some embodiments, the facility automatically shifts between different granularities based upon factors such as the size of the document, the area in which the document representation is being displayed, the zoom level at which the document representation is being displayed, the scroll position of the document representation's display, etc.
In some embodiments, the facility stores the content classifications it imposes in a way that makes them usable by a separate access policy management system in order to regulate access to the corresponding content, and/or itself performs this function. For example, when a particular user opens a document, the facility or the access policy management system determines based upon (1) the user's identity and/or other information about the user, (2) the classification level imposed on each document portion, and (3) access policy rules that specify how each document portion should be displayed to the user. In some embodiments, this results in a proper subset of the document being displayed to the user. In a variety of embodiments, the classifications imposed by the facility on document portions are used to control a variety of types of access to the document portions, including access to display, access to quote or incorporate into another document, access to revise, access to attach comments, etc.
In some embodiments, the facility is easily adapted to the access policy rules and access policy management systems used by a particular organization. For example, the access policy rules for different organizations may employ different logic to determine whether a particular user can display a document portion having the same classification level.
In some embodiments, the facility is easily adapted to the sensitivity classification scheme used by a particular organization, and/or for a particular purpose. For example, for first organization, the facility may be configured to perform sensitivity classification using the levels “high business impact,” “moderate business impact,” and “low business impact;” while for a second organization the facility may be configured to perform sensitivity classification using the levels “confidential,” “private,” and “public.”
In some embodiments, the facility uses a classification scheme whose classification levels are directly prescriptive of which users may access document portions classified at a particular level. In some such embodiments, the classification levels of the classification scheme correspond to different explicitly-defined groups of users, such as “all Acme Products, Inc. users,” “Acme Products, Inc. Marketing Department,” “my boss,” etc.; or, for personal documents, “extended family,” “college friends,” “Mayberry Photography Club,” etc.
In various embodiments, the facility generates and presents a variety of analytic measures relating to the classification of portions of documents. Examples include: the number of documents that a user viewed on a particular day containing portions classified at a high-business-impact classification level; the number of documents that, during a particular period of time, have their first portion classified at a top-secret classification level; a person making the greatest authoring contributions to documents having portions classified at a top-secret classification level; among document fragments classified at a high-business-impact classification level, those that have been incorporated into the largest number of documents; etc.
By performing in some or all of the ways described above, the facility provides a helpful and easy-to-use tool for imposing content classifications on portions of electronic documents, as a basis, for example, for controlling one or more kinds of access to document portions by different users. In some embodiments, the facility further provides a reduction in the level of computing resources needed to perform content classification of documents, such as by removing the need to acquire and operate separate hardware resources for storing documents whose content is classified at different content classification levels.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the acts shown in
While
After the facility has been used to paint content classifications onto portions of a document, those content classifications can be used to control access to those portions of the content by different users, such as by controlling whether different users can view these portions of the document. As noted above, in various embodiments, the facility has various levels of involvement in this control process.
Like the visual indications shown to the painting user, in various embodiments, the facility adds visual indications of content classifications for the viewing user(s) in various positions, including, for example, in the document representation's margin; in a scrollbar for scrolling the document representation; in a pop-up window triggered by user interactions such as hovering a mouse cursor or directing a human gaze; within the content of the document representation; etc. In various embodiments, these indications take various forms, including, for example, painting segments of the height of the scrollbar with different colors or patterns relating to content classifications imposed on document portions at corresponding positions within the representation; directly painting the content of the document representation with different colors or patterns, either changing the color of the content (e.g., text) itself, or changing the color or pattern of the background against which the content is displayed, or inserting a border of a particular color and/or pattern around the content; adding to the margin shapes whose presence, colors, patterns, dimensions, or areas relate to the content beside them; etc.
In some embodiments, the facility provides a computing system for interacting with an electronic document, comprising: a processor; and a memory having contents that, when executed by the processor: cause to be displayed a visual representation of the document; receive first input representing a painting interaction with a portion of the displayed visual representation of the document that corresponds to a portion of the document; and in response to receiving the first input, impose on the corresponding portion of the document a distinguished content sensitivity classification level.
In some embodiments, the facility provides one or more memories collectively containing a content classification data structure, the content classification data structure comprising a plurality of elements, each element comprising: information identifying a portion of a document; and information indicating a content classification level specified for the identified portion of a document via a painting user interface interaction, such that the contents of a particular element can be used to perform content classification-based access control with respect to the portion of a document that it identifies.
In some embodiments, the facility provides one or more memories collectively having contents configured to cause a computing system to: cause to be displayed to an owner of the document a first visual representation of the document; receive input representing a painting interaction with a portion of the displayed first visual representation of the document that corresponds to a portion of the document; and in response to receiving the first input, impose on the corresponding portion of the document a distinguished content classification level.
In some embodiments, the facility provides a method in a computing system, comprising: causing to be displayed to an owner of the document a first visual representation of the document; receiving input representing a painting interaction with a portion of the displayed first visual representation of the document that corresponds to a portion of the document; and in response to receiving the first input, imposing on the corresponding portion of the document a distinguished content classification level.
It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the above-described facility may be straightforwardly adapted or extended in various ways. While the foregoing description makes reference to particular embodiments, the scope of the invention is defined solely by the claims that follow and the elements recited therein.
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